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Proton joins suit against Apple for practices that harm developers and consumers

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Re: Proton joins suit against Apple for practices that harm developers and consumers

#201

Post by crazygringo »

ryoshoe wrote: post #95
crazygringo wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why wouldn't they? Apple isn't dominant in the market worldwide (Android is), and they are competing against Android. Apple often implements things Android did first. That's how competition works. Apple's global marketshare is 30% or just under.

Why does Apple's global marketshare matter when the suit is being brought to US courts where Apple holds the majority of the market

Because companies compete globally, not just locally?

Apple isn't building features to compete with Samsung only in the US. It's a global dynamic. Local competition is restricted to tiny subsets of features.

And it's only 57-42 for Apple in the US anyways. If it were 90-10 then sure. But 57-42 is what you get with strong competition. Having a majority doesn't mean there's a lack of competition. It just means one company is currently ahead, as one of them usually will be when there are two main players.

Re: Proton joins suit against Apple for practices that harm developers and consumers

#202

Post by Jcowell »

yaky wrote: post #137
danaris wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is hopelessly exaggerated and bad-faith. First of all, when Apple created iMessage, there was no possible way for them to predict that friend groups would use it as a reason to treat members of their groups poorly due to using Android phones. Second of all, Apple did not deliberately make interacting with non-iMessage users in group chats "look like trash" in order to exclude them. Apple went out of its way to m…

What Apple could have done, for sake of clarity, sanity, and good practice is to handle SMS using one app, and handle iMessage using another, *separate* app. The problem is not that iMessage exists, it's that it operates in opaque and unpredictable ways, mixing SMS and iMessage (and now RCS) communication in a way where even more tech-savvy users do not understand how it works (first-hand experience - had to explain…

> What Apple could have done, for sake of clarity, sanity, and good practice is to handle SMS using one app, and handle iMessage using another, separate app.

That sounds like a terrible user experience ?

Re: Proton joins suit against Apple for practices that harm developers and consumers

#203

Post by 6510 »

jeffbee wrote: post #76
bitpush wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the lawsuit > For example, when a user purchases an iPhone, the user is steered to use Apple’s default email product, Apple Mail. It is only through a complex labyrinth of settings that a user can change her default email application away from the Apple “Mail” application towards an alternative like Gmail (Google) or Proton Mail. > At least for mail a user can in theory modify the default setting. On the calenda…

The "complex labyrinth" is only reinforcing the impression that you and the author of that brief are both cranks. "Email" is the top setting under "Default Apps". My iPhone doesn't even offer Apple's Mail app in that screen, probably because I deleted it, which also was not labyrinthine but actually quite trivial.

home screen > settings > default apps > email

Easy if you know where to look. If you end up in the wrong sub menu you might simply search the web for instructions.

Apple provides web pages where they explain how to use the iphone. There is a section called "mail" under "apps" that shows up in the search results. It really wants me to read the help in dutch, the "apps > mail" section has 14 pages that don't talk about changing the default app, in stead they explain how to use the various features of their own mail app (that is also configured by default)

I don't get why the help pages need a different menu structure.

One has to go to "personalize your iphone" which has 18 pages, changing default apps is towards the end.

Searching the Dutch help website for "mail" I get only 3 unhelpful search results. If i change it to US English it immediately redirects to Dutch again. lol?

Using the "English" for Latin America and the Caribbean works. There I get 5 pages worth of results. Changing the default app is on page 3.

Not impossible but it is not a simple prompt on launch of the app "Banana mail is not currently your default email client. Do you want to set Banana mail as your default app for sending email?"

I'm quite dense of course, if they are going to be like that I will NEVER create an email client for this platform.

The web and their TOS is full of good reasons to never create an app for iphone.

In a laps of sanity I created a pwa one time. I've explained to exactly one user how to add the option to add a web app to the home screen to the menu so that they can add a web app to the home screen. It was a really hard sell and it took a long time.

I of course had to laugh at myself for acting against my better judgement.

Imagine someone made a web app email client and tried to compete with the build in client. Then in the middle of the struggle apple jokes about discontinuing PWA.

Seems a pretty level playing field?

Re: Proton joins suit against Apple for practices that harm developers and consumers

#204

Post by 6510 »

Workaccount2 wrote: post #191
BowBun wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't think any big tech company has ever done anything as evil and predatory Don't you think this is _maybe_ an overstatement? I was annoyed about this for years but reading your take is borderline satirical.

No, I don't think it's an understatement at all.... In the difficulty of non-iMessage compatibility, I have had people close to me say "Why don't you just get an iPhone?" with an incredulous tone. Perhaps tech companies have had more evil things happen on their platforms, that for whatever reason they were slow to react to. But "Why don't you just get an iPhone" was a precisely and meticulously engineered line, pure…

Reminds me of "Consuming kids" where the marketeers conclude the children in the family decide which car brand dad will buy.

Re: Proton joins suit against Apple for practices that harm developers and consumers

#205

Post by 6510 »

ribosometronome wrote: post #196
palata wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and from what I've seen, often act as if that is some sort of mark of superiority. Feels like you weren't able to have a proper discussion with those people. In many EU countries, using SMS made/makes no sense because SMS was/is super expensive as compared to WhatsApp. And using iMessage makes no sense because most people don't have an iPhone. From their point of view, it actually makes no sense . Now if you tell t…

>because it was free SMS, really. Since when can WhatsApp interact with SMS users? They're so evil and predatory that they have entirely walled themselves off from that method of communication entirely.

I like how they (just like imessage) allow you to message someone who cant possibly read the message because they have no whatsapp. Then again, I think they cant even deliver the message over sms on iphone? SMS is only available in the apple app if you first force it to send SMS?

Re: Proton joins suit against Apple for practices that harm developers and consumers

#206

Post by nulbyte »

_benton wrote: post #125
spogbiper wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

if all you want is for your apps to come from Apple's store and your payments to go through Apple's system, you would simply continue to use only those options and allowing other people to have other options would not impact you. what you actually want is to force all developers to use Apple's distribution and payment systems, so that you can have every app and service from any provider delivered via your chosen mech…

Developers are not forced into using Apple's distribution and payment systems because there are a multitude of other competing devices (with a higher market share mind you) they can and do develop for. If users and developers prefer other systems they can simply use those.

Except that developers are forced to use Apple's distribution and payment systems to reach users with a native experience on Apple devices. This ability to limit or control competition within a market is called market capture, a key consideration of antitrust.

Re: Proton joins suit against Apple for practices that harm developers and consumers

#207

Post by freetinker »

Workaccount2 wrote: post #39

I don't think any big tech company has ever done anything as evil and predatory as Apple walling off iMessage, giving the impression that Apple phones were high technology, and interacting with peasant androids is what made group chats fragment and pictures and videos look like trash. Few things are more enraging than people being left out of chats with friends and family because they didn't bend over for Apple. Even…

Apple does not owe Android users a superior non-Apple experience. Android a pretty damn huge platform, right? Way bigger than Apple, I hear? Blame Google. Google failed to compete.

Re: Proton joins suit against Apple for practices that harm developers and consumers

#208

Post by wavemode »

8fingerlouie wrote: post #190
wavemode wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Explain stifle, or more specifically how Apple is doing that ? I wrote a comment about that here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44426128#44427725 > You may not like the price associated with it, which is what most of these complaints are about, the fact that Apple scoops up 30% of recurring subscriptions created through the App Store as well. People tend to forget that running your own infrastructure is also…

> Then don't do it. Who exactly is forcing you to? The problem is, when the option exists it opens up an attack vector that I need to defend against, as it will surely be exploited by malware at some point, downloading an app when you visit some scam site, and boom you're now infected. > Simply having a link in my app to a page where someone pays through Stripe instead of through Apple Payments, But it hardly stifles…

> The problem is, when the option exists it opens up an attack vector that I need to defend against, as it will surely be exploited by malware at some point, downloading an app when you visit some scam site, and boom you're now infected.

This makes no sense. There is no "boom". You can't accidentally do it. There are a series of very deliberate steps, with numerous warning signs. Even on Android I have to specifically enable an option to even be able to install apps from alternate sources, and it is a separate permission per source, and this option can be locked down on a managed device (e.g. a work phone).

By your logic, there should be no web browsers on iOS, since someone might visit a scam website and give away all their money.

> They want to be able to give away their app and sell subscriptions, and they expect Apple to foot the bill for the infrastructure required to provide downloads.

Nobody expects that. What the EU wants is, simply let another app store compete. That new app store will host the downloads.

You keep shedding tears for the costs to Apple's infrastructure, yet as I keep repeating - what many developers really want is to NOT use Apple's infrastructure. NOT use Apple's payment processor. If the problem is that we're being a burden to Apple, well then I'm in full agreement with you, let's stop doing that!

Re: Proton joins suit against Apple for practices that harm developers and consumers

#209

Post by bigyabai »

charcircuit wrote: post #57
lillecarl wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When your platform becomes a dominant market it becomes a market and markets are regulated to prevent market abuse, this is what's happening now. And while Facebook and Google would still be hoarding data, there are a huge amount of games and apps I'd rather pay 5 for that are now ad-fueled invasive crapps and "pay to remove ads" costs 15 instead of 5. When a significant percentage of the population uses your product…

Companies should not be regulated just because they are successful. Apple built a really successful app platform. It's theirs to maintain or burn to the ground.

Apple has no choice, now. Their shareholders demand one thing - squeeze money from an audience with no alternative.

If the iPhone's App Store has competition, equivalent to how MacOS already works in America, then Apple has to choose between maintenance or abandonment. In the status quo, Apple is enabled to neglect their platform and users while almost singularly harming developers.

Re: Proton joins suit against Apple for practices that harm developers and consumers

#210

Post by zaphar »

ivell wrote: post #64
zaphar wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The user can hack the product, install a different OS, Strike it with a hammer, or throw it away. Apple hasn't violated their rights in any way. Sure hacking it or installing a different OS are hard but rights are not meant to guarantee something is easy. I never bought the argument that user rights should dictate how a product hardware or software should be manufactured.

> I never bought the argument that user rights should dictate how a product hardware or software should be manufactured Probably you meant it differently, but guaranties and warranties exist exactly due to this. Users have right to expect their device performs as advertised and in a reasonable manner.

I think those are more about ensuring that the user is buying what they think they are buying. They don't dictate exactly what is sold they merely offer protection to the user that what they bought is what was on the tin.
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